The free pdf contains all that you will need to play and uses the simple yet versatile tenGINE rules system.

Snuff can be played as a one of survival horror game or as a series of games to establish The Mongoose Squad – a group of embittered survivors that have vowed to hunt and kill those working in the snuff industry.

Play the ten snuff sites included and create your own.

I’d decided not to choose before hand, but select two at the beginning of the 24hr period. Some called this “going in cold like an echo”. However the truth is, I’m so busy with work, study, fatherhood and everything else life throws at you, I decided not to pressure myself with the competition, until I was ready to do it.

I present to you; Running with the dead, a mash up of Blade Runner and Dusk till dawn.

I don’t intend to adhere strictly to the source material. I consider it inspiration. Almost like a ronnies competition. This game is inspired by the movies and not a deliberate attempt to fuse them wholesale.

Inside you’ll find the setting, the rules and a sample adventure. I hope you have fun.

Feedback is encouraged and should be delivered to 1km1kt.net/forum

This game was written for the 24 Hour RPG Movie Mashup Competition hosted in 1KM1KT. The idea was to mix two movies and make a game out of it. I picked Aladdin and Riders of the Lost Ark. From this movies came the idea of tomb riders in a fantastic version of ancient middle east, getting into trouble to find treasures protected by genies.

What “Beholden” is:

- A diceless solo RPG.

- An entry in the April 2011 Ronnies, using the terms “chains” and “queen”.

- A (_____) of Ben Lehman’s game “Beloved”. Choose your preferred term from the list: recontextualization; inversion; retelling; pastiche; critique.  The draft of Beloved that Beholden is based on can be found here: http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forge/index.php?topic1271.0

- A direct response to Beloved, and a dialogue starter.

What it is not:

- Original.  I wrote it, but it would not exist without Ben’s game.

- An “expansion” or “mod”.  Beholden is fully self-contained.

- A challenge to the value of the source game.

You know that with each telling, with each battle with heroes and other monsters, the tale changes and takes new turns. And one day that winding tale might just bring you freedom.

You and your companions would not heed the elders’€™ warnings. You would not accept the dark fate intended for her, you could not live under the shadow of your guilt if you did nothing. Instead, you took up what weapons and other items you have and struck out toward the bastion of the Queen of Thorns.

The hulking shape of the Queen’s fortress is on the horizon. You look to your impromptu company and take heart knowing you will not be going into that damned place alone.

Meanwhile, she lies in the Queen’s dungeon, imprisoned by twisted chains of thorns that tear at her flesh. She weeps, bereft of everything except a faint glimmer of hope.

A peer story game for 3 or 4 or 5 players.

This is an entry into the april 2011 Ronnies competition. It is an initial approach to the thing, which will later appear in a more fully realized fashion.

You decide the setting, your individual character’s motivation and direction he’d like to take the group, and then play with your friends through four rounds of debate and vote-casting to ultimately choose who has the best idea (or strongest motivation/force of will) for the group to execute.

Comments and feedback are welcomed and can be sent to thehopelessgamer@gmail.com

In “All The King’s Men”, you take the role of soldiers in the employ of King John as you hunt down traitors to the crown. This game combines themes from Apocalypse Now and Robin Hood (1922).

“Spade vs. Indy” pits two archetypical characters against each other – a hard-knuckled professor of archaeology and an evenly hard-knuckled private eye. This deceitful, backstabby game inherits the effective pulp storytelling of Indiana Jones and the dense, dark noir atmosphere of The Maltese Falcon. With playing card-based game mechanics.

It is the year 2099 and humanity is about to pass into the next century, but doom looms over everyone’s heads at the prophecy made by the internet hacker Dante – Humanity has reached the 9th Layer, they have made the ultimate betrayal.  Now, as a Ghost Runner, you the players must track down rogue Ghosts, pulled from the afterlife and embedded into cybernetic SHELS which are used to hold these spirits to the world.  Set against a not-so-different-but-still-dystopian future, be sure to bring your Flying Car.

This game uses the SotC SRD and features the use of Fate Points and Aspects.  It also uses the new DOOM 8 d8 Rules Lite system.

Play as a ghost hunter in the kingdom of Al Aalam, where djinns, ghouls and gray old ladies spreads fear with their ectoplasmic beings. Gather your friends, hop on the ivory flying carpet, and pull out your trusty old oil lamp – I ain’t afraid of no djinns!

West Side Horror is a Romance Horror Comedy Musical gamed based upon the idea of mashing together West Side Story and Little Shop of Horrors.  In it you play two sides of a rival gang that just happens to be full of romance, each side is in love with someone from the otherside, while a Monster, named Keeton, is trying to take over the world and possibly eat it.

1st draft, 2/8/11 using “whisper” (as a thing players do) and “morning” (as “reset” or “new beginning”)

An amnesiac agent trapped in a strange place on a secret mission hears whispering voices. Can the agent recover a lost identity and complete the mission before the Nemesis arrives? If so, then what? And what’s the whispers’ role in it all?

In The Secret Lives of Serial Killers, two players deceive a third player into thinking they are playing a
game called “Sunshine Boulevard,” a feel-good structured freeform game about quirky recluses in love. In
fact, they are setting up the third player as the serial killer’s victim, to be killed in play.

“I barely recognize the world any more.” 

- Allen Stacy, The Bugle

A game about Crows;

Humans are stupid.

Maybe there are a few of them who are clever in their own
ways, but on the whole they don’t know much about the
world of the spirits, they don’t know what happens to them
after they die, they don’t even understand the damage they
are doing to the world they live in.

Most of the other intelligent Animals wrote them off as a lost
cause centuries ago, in a few more centuries they’ll wipe
themselves out. Only a few of us still care about them; but
the Dogs have become too close, forgetting their sacred pro-
tective duties, the Cats have always had agendas of their own,
the Rats have lost their way and many of the wild Beasts are
scared to walk into the great canyons of steel and glass.

As one of the few old races at home in the cities and the wild,
we are still able to do what is necessary. We might not be able
to restore the balance, but we can stop it getting too far out of
control. By imparting wisdom to the living, and bringing
back the dead, we can help the humans get things right. This
is still their world, even if they are killing it, but through
bringing back the dead ones willing to make a change, im-
parting wisdom to the ones willing to listen, and leaving the
right hints for the inquisitive, we can channel the humans
into making the changes that might just save us all.

The Volume of Secrets is a cooperative or competitive RPG where you take the role of an Angel that is trying to hide or expose a secret to the world by manipulating people and the environment. Join the Owls, and quiet the volume of the Whisper, or join the Ravens, and bring the whisper to a conversational tone. Be careful though, If a secret goes to quiet or goes to loud, you have the potential to become a demon, and lose the ability to adjust the volume forever.

Take to the air and unleash bloody murder on the enemies of Terra!

Soar over the ground pounding grunts and bring death from above.

MurderWing is a 24hr expansion for the award winning 3:16.

A people, whose civilization has stopped at feudalism, lives here and strives to survive, almost only from hunting, farming, and what little commerce is possible. A people that respects, worships and draws power from his Ancestors and from the Spirits of the sorrounding world.

A strange people. You are one of them.

A people of humanoid reptiles, each one different from the others: they are the Saurids, the Sons of the lizards. No Saurid is like another: tall or small, snake-like or brawny, with two or four arms, with small or protuberant eyes, with vivid or shy colors… The most variable combinations are possibles.

And some have wings. Not everyone, but some have them. They are very little, and many of them abuse of their freedom.

Who has wings, is one step above the others. He can travel, he can communicate, he can visit the islands searching for others like him, and gather them to subjugate the weaks.

In the Stormlands, who has wings often goes searching power and wealth. They are warlords, power-hungry aristocrats, tainted sciamans, greedy assassins and who knows what else.

Then one day, the massacre came to your home. The blood knocks at your door. It’s the blood of your relatives, shed from who have wings and use them to make other suffer.

But the blood knocked to the wrong door.

Because you have wings too.

So you can try the impossible: unlike all the others, you can track from island to island who killed your loved ones, you can search for him far away and in the end kill him without mercy. You can fly searching for your revenge, driven by your fury, because you have nothing to lose.

And here starts your story.

description:

This is a game based on the court of Louis XVI, the last King of France, who was executed after the French revolution.  His reputation is of a well meaning, but indecisive ruler who relied heavily on the effectiveness of his appointed advisors and was forever subject to the desires of the nobles who comprised his court.  Any historical accuracy presented in this game is purely coincidental.

Each player takes the role of one of the nobles in Louis’s court, but their identity is kept secret from other players.  The aim of the game is get a puppet King installed on the French throne who is beholden to the player’s character for his position.  Untold wealth and favors then ensure.  The trouble is, all of the other players  are also angling for the same outcome with their own man.  And of course there is the pesky business of running the country itself, lest the peasants revolt and chop off everybody’s head.

These unscrupulous, wannabe  ”powers behind the throne” will stop at nothing to achieve their aims.  Sex, scandal, blackmail, bribery, strong-arming, dueling and even murder are de rigueur.

You’re a hard-boiled man (or woman) in a gritty, corrupt world.  Lust, greed, vengeance, jealousy — one of these is the bitter taste in the back of your throat.  Some might call it a sin.  You call it a mission.  And you’re not going to let anything stand in your way (except maybe your own flaws).

Meanwhile, the city is seething around you.  The night is steamy, and ready to boil over at the slightest provocation.  And in the shadows, steely eyes glint from above a demonic black beak, silently driving people into ever greater acts of desperation …

Waiting to unleash chaos and hell … with one mighty CAW.

Deathbird Black: Comedy noir.  Tongue-in-cheek, dice-flinging fun.

In this roleplaying game for two to six players, you play a Shroud. Once human, you are now an angel of death tasked with the culling of millions of human lives. To do so, you will use the powers of war, pestilence, famine, misfortune, atrophy, and despair at your fingertips to kill men, women, and children indiscriminately. This horrible act is nothing less than necessary, to decrease the surplus population of Earth in order to save the entire human race from extinction.

How can you kill millions of people to serve The Balance while clinging to the tatters of your humanity?

Many of the third have been killed. This is the story of those that are left.

Ariel leaps from the steeple. Her gold dress, soaked. Her black hair swirling in the wind.

She disappears from view.

No body is ever found.

A single white feather drifts slowly down in the morning light and lands on the statue of Goethe.

A bell rings, almost beyond the range of human hearing.

You are the champions of the Witch of the Moon and the Prince of the Sun, struggling to bring about the ascendency of your patron in the unending celestial cycle. This adventure game allows you to play each side in turn as you seek to bring both light and darkness to the land.

The Sword of the Skull is a game for two players. One plays the adventurer, a stalwart hero who
searches ancient ruins and dungeons for potent magic items. The other plays the GM, who designs the
dungeons and provides the adversity.

Players are divided into four groups. You will want at least four players.
One player is the Witness, also known as the Game Master. They keep an eye on the time, signal for players to wrap up or continue scenes, and pass judgement over the proceedings. They do not portray a character, although in some parts they may play extra parts.
One player is the solider. They are the focal player of the game. The character that they play is a veteran of one or more wars, who is now senile and dying. Solider player: figure out your name, your rank, and what wars you fought in. The soldier wants peace and absolution before death, whatever that means to him.
The other players are divided between ghosts and family. Err on the side of more ghosts.

Veterans is a competitive role-playing game for 4 or more players, based on retired veterans from a war spinning yarns about their adventures.

Written for a 24 hour game comp. (2011 Ronnies)

This Latin reminder, which rose to prominence during medieval outbreaks of the Black Death and which has served as a motif for artists and writers throughout history, remains universally true. There is no need to make exceptions or equivocate. We must die.

An old, weathered skull, flanked by vases, books, or other common household objects is one of the most widespread depictions of the Memento Mori. The image of a universal symbol of death in the center of the bits and pieces of mundane everyday life presents a clear message: don’t be complacent or falsely confident, death is always present and always possible.

This is the same message presented by the Danse Macabre, the dance of death, a motif used in painting, sculptures, engravings and other art, particularly during the Middle Ages. The Danse Macabre depicts men and women of all ages and social classes dancing among skeletons and corpses, reminding viewers that even during life’s most joyous and frivolous moments, death is nearby. All of life’s hectic, rhythmic  steps must end in a full stop.

Danse Macabre is a role-playing game about death. It uses content, scenes and mechanics based on the Memento Mori and the Danse Macabre to allow players to engage with death and mortality. In Danse Macrabre, the lives of characters are short and, often, incomplete. One player character dies during each cycle of scenes, and players will actively take on the role of a personified Death. The game uses music and a mechanic loosely based on musical chairs to simulate the dance.  Ultimately, Danse Macabre culminates in a series of direct confrontations (and conversations) with Death where the characters and, eventually, Death itself must answer difficult questions about how and why we die.

My biggest influences are Illuminatus! and Foucault’s Pendulum, but feel free to draw inspiration from other far-reaching conspiracy fiction. The following movies come to mind: Indiana Jones (Raiders & Last Crusade), The Da Vinci Code, Stigmata, Shutter Island, Sherlock Holmes.

A solo survival horror RPG. I am Legend meets Play Your (tarot) Cards Right.

By Joe J Prince (www.princeofdarknessgames.com), for the Ronnies Jan 2011 (www.indie-rpgs.com).

You are the sole survivor of the Skull-Taker incursion. With only your journal to keep you sane, you must hold out as long as possible against the encroaching horror.

The swords are out for you!

In those moments, when we are faced with a choice, which gets priority? Our desires or our duty? The Knights of Arathess are faced with this choice over and over as they fight for their king and fight for their yearnings.

In this game, you take the role of The Master Wizard, an ageing veteran wizard who is approaching the end of his or her life and now realizes that the accomplishment that made him or her famous was but a fleeting victory. Prior to yet again performing the Ritual that made him or her famous, he or she must vanquish any lingering Grief or Regrets, and overcome his sense of Loss at the prospect of losing his or her life.

This was my submission for the Ronnies and utilizes the ingredients of Old and Soldier. Inspirations come most directly from an exercise I participated in during my palliative care clerkship in medical school, which taught me a lot about Loss, how an RPG might work as a solo experience, as well as how to make game elements intensely meaningful to players. Other inspirations include the boardgame Pandemic, various RPGs including but not limited to Dogs in the Vineyard, The Leverage RPG, Capes, Committee for the Exploration of Mysteries, Apocalypse world, and the 1st edition AD&D DMG!

As a first draft, it needs many things, most especially a little playtesting.

You were once an ancient, powerful wizard, your power unrivaled except by the Gods! Your
magic had even preserved you; for a time. Flesh became gaunt; gaunt flesh became bones,
bones became brittle, until finally you’re just a skull on a shelf. Sure, you still have eons of
experience and knowledge at your command, but no hands!

You try and exert your influence over those that come across your paths. You’ve built networks
of spies, gotten comfortable in your new digs when someone starts swiping up all the talent.
Seems like there’s other skulls out there, wielding their power in your turf and that JUST.
WONT. DO!

Demilich is a 2-3 player competitive story strategy game where you will play a demilich (a
magical ancient skull), build their fortress, minions and network of influence and destroy those of your competitors. Explore the angst and isolation of being a magical skull…or just crush your opposition. The game plays in approximately 2 hours from start to end.

But who you were still glimmers in your mind. Perhaps you can resolve the things left undone. Perhaps you can save those you loved. Perhaps, shattered fragment that you are, you can still make who you were a greater person.

The remote farming community of Durum had to learn to make do without its husbands, fathers, and brothers, and 200 years later, things look very different: women run things now, the men all stay at home with the children, and no one can say for sure if the empire, what took the men to war back when, still stands.

But the patrols have brought back word of finding someone not-from-Durum on their rounds. Who could it be? Is there still an empire out there? What became of those ancestral, missing men?

You’re the heroine of a strict, Spartan culture, forced to face the world again after all this time. May you live into your Third Age, sister!

My game is called the Knights of Twilight.

It is a game about fencing.

Quite a lot of RPGs have tried to construct a realistic simulation of a sword duel or swordplaying, so far. As far as I understand swordplaying, with almost 10 years of fencing competitions on my shoulders, they all failed. This game, or at least the state of development in which this game is so far (very starting), wants to bring to the players the very thrill of instant-decision that is both tactical and practical; that a “life on the edge” which is the very momentum in the life of a fencer. An edge that is sharp, quick, and deadly.

I added some dark-fantasy color to it, because I always found interesting to explore a character that is a hero, but because of his ties to darkness. A double-edge that is both source of hope and damnation.

Witless Minion is a low-detail, high-trust game system. The rules are fairly abstract and assume a group familiar with role-playing games. It is a more narrative-driven game but GMs with a desire for greater crunch can easily expand on the rules presented here. Each player assumes the role of a minion, selects an archetype and picks their own talents and flaws. Depending on the campaign frame, players may be trying to climb the hierarchy in a single organization or move between a number of masters.

Players will need a bunch of d10s, the usual pen and paper, plus a number of tokens or coins to represent drama points.

While the game uses a standard dice pool mechanic for resolution, it does provide a number of new systems tailored to the genre:

• Flashbacks: This mechanic allows players to ‘retcon’ preparation for a caper or operation. This encourages creativity and allows the GM to move forward into heists and the like without having the players spend hours debating the details.
• Limits: A system of drama point rewards for play based on a character’s disadvantages.
• The Hierarchy of Villainy: Minions operate at the bottom of the food chain– with a number of ranks above them. This mechanic simulates the difficulty faced by minions when fighting named characters.
• The Prisoner’s Dilemma: An optional system which offers a tangible incentive for sticking together and at the same time for bugging out on your teammates.

In ‘A Strange Charm’, players adopt Roles in the story – Victory, Defeat, Love or Shadow – instead of specific characters. As the Scholar, an exiled Traveller, adopts different agendas he is controlled by different players. The humans and aliens he encounters are likewise run by different players as their role in the story changes.

Did you ever wonder why superheroes wear their underwear on the outside? Are they in too much of a hurry to dress properly? Or maybe they’re confident enough to be flashy? The truth is that their underwear is the secret of their power. A mysterious individual, known only as Keeton, has discovered how to make what he calls Magic Pants. They give the wearer powers beyond what normal people could achieve otherwise. He has also learned how to make masks, capes, and shoes, but every super hero needs Magic Pants. He gives these items to a select few willing to take up the fight against evil and those who try to tear down society. In this game, you are one of those lucky few.

In Tunnel Wars, you play as either a dwarf or a goblin on opposite sides of the decades long Copper War.

It isn’t a serious game by any measure of the word “serious,” and this was a first attempt at a 24 hour RPG, but it’s probably playable.

A game about goblins and dwarves running around in magic pants made of copper fighting a war
No, really, that’s actually what the game is about

Enjoy them during college, your coffee break, when you can’t sleep on the phone, while you’re on the bus, or just when there’s nothing on TV.

This is arguably a playable game, but it doesn’t look very good. There is much missing from this first draft: graphics, fit & finish, a fleshed-out sample adventure, and a Narrator’s section.

The world of Appliance Adventures is very similar to our own world, advanced fifteen years into the future. Science has made great strides in the field of simulated intelligence. True artificial intelligence beyond the level of simple animals has evaded researchers to this point, but futurists and pundits (ever a reliable source) think that it is right around the corner.

The game is a cyberpunk-styled RPG where the players take on the roles of the gnomes the descendents in culture if not genetics of those people who moved into the superstructure of the domes. This is a world that is entirely off the grid. They have to scavenge for everything from food to water and in some domes even for air.

Geodesic Gnomes is a full RPG – setting, character creation rules, physical, social and political conflict resolution mechanics, a unique equipment system, character sheet and even a multiple scene adventure to play through for your first game to get into the setting and game.

Since the day the world ended, maybe the multiverse hasn’t finished with you. Some of you claim to know, but who’s to say, really? Whatever the case, as the cold closed in, each of you reached out, from some resource you never knew you had, for any way to go on. Your world died, but you coursed elsewhere, scattered around a happy and unsuspecting new variant with different lives and different names. Over the years, you found each other, those who wanted to be found, and another thing: a purpose.

Players take the roles of refugees from a destroyed universe – not destroyed by accident: they’ve come to realise that the consumption of their world and countless others fueled the establishment of a far distant utopia, a place of endless spring and the best of good fortune. What the players choose to do in this green January, if they ever find it, is up to them.

You must escape the orphanage, your home with the other children for as long as you can remember before this doom finds you.

But what is this doom? What exactly is coming for you? Is it fire, darkness, a murderous Mr Keaton? It is up to you to decide, and the worse it is the more cookies you’ll get.

Dr. Reginald Keeton, the CEO of TeddyBears, Inc. took three popular things and combined them into a marketing frenzy unlike anything anyone had seen before. Reality TV, Blood Sport, the cute wasted husks of the Teddy Bears of his empty stores and created entertainment that took the world by storm.

Dr. Keeton was as astute and powerful if misguided student of the occult and used his talents in dark magics to invest the empty husks with lost souls he pulled from the depths of Hell. This act of desperation led to many of the bears to be home to some of the most vile and twisted souls ever seen by humanity. However, this worked to his advantage…for a time. The bears were bloodthirsty killers and performed exactly as he directed.

Children and their misguided parents lined up to watch their favorite stuffed animals slash and tear each other apart, ripping the enchanted fluff from their guts, all while the audience screamed in sheer joy. The show became a massive hit and things were great for many months and TeddyBears, Inc. saw huge profit margins and Keeton was hailed as a master businessman. He named his creations ScareBears.

Then the trouble began. The souls became restless and unhappy in their condition. Frankly, they were a little pissed they had been trapped in puny little furry bodies, can you really blame them? People began disappearing from the set of the TV show, the telltale sign of a little fluff left at the scene of the crimes was a dead giveaway as to who was at fault. Initially Keeton did all he could to cover the problem and continue his show. Quickly the bears out smarted him and began plotting.

Recently, a few bears failed to appear for their performance. Their cages were checked but found empty. The ScareBears have been released upon the world. Keeton nervously now watches his back.

Enter the world of

Teddy Bear Blood Sport!

I gave Dyson my best “up-yours” glare and blew a smoke ring where his face should’ve been. Dyson was a featureless ball who usually floated at about shoulder height (on me, anyway). He appeared to be made of glass, but God knows what my mentor had crafted him out of. Glass wasn’t bulletproof, and I’d seen Dyson
take a .38 slug at point blank and show not so much as a scratch. His color slowly shifted to match my mood, which meant that right now he was deep, non-reflective black. “Not likely,” I responded, “If guns and knives can’t kill me, I don’t think bad habits will.” I shifted in my seat in a vain attempt to restore some feeling to my nether parts. “How much longer is this gonna take, Dyson? I have other appointments to
keep.”

“Don’t get your knickers in a twist, boss,” Dyson said jauntily, “I scan that the mark will enter the building in 11.023 seconds.” I turned my gaze to the door just in time to see two figures fade out of the night shadows. I blinked the darkness out of my eyes to see them clearly. It was a girl and a boy, both Latino teens. She was a bit chunky but firm, cute if you like chubby girls, with a jiggle to her middle that suggested baby weight. He was tall and wiry with multiple piercings and the half-mohawk haircut that all the wannabe hardboys were wearing in these parts. No doubt about it, this was the mark and the expected companion. The boy jimmied the lock with the ease of long practice and pushed the girl through the door, then he slipped in behind her.

“About time,” I grumbled as I tossed my half-smoked cigarette into the Shadow. I opened the car door as the church door clicked shut, unfolded my six-foot-three height from the cramped confines of the Firebird and crossed the street in what I hoped was a confident swagger. Dyson bobbed along beside me in silence, all business now that it was go-time. I stopped at the door and eyed my familiar. Dyson gave an electronic sigh and willed the sounds inside to percolate through the wood and into my ears.

“I don’t know about this, Raphael,” the girl whined, “Isn’t there some other way?” I could hear her clothes rustle as she fidgeted and a squeaking sound that was probably one of her hands twisting a ring on the other. Various thumps and bumps told me that Raphael was moving things around. I needed more information than my ears alone could provide. I signaled Dyson to oblige, and he extended my other senses into the church. My projected vision revealed desolate absence. The pews and pulpit were long gone, probably broken up for firewood, and any curtains or hangings that had once adorned the walls had long since been
converted to blankets. Such is the way of the world after civilization collapses, yet the locals retained enough piety that the stained glass windows were unbroken. Jesus remained on the wall, staring forlornly at the empty space where the sanctuary used to be. I knew how he felt. The girl stood next to her boyfriend while he knelt on the floor surrounded by boxes. He was unloading ritual paraphernalia and carefully arranging it according to some formula. A ring of candles surrounded a thin sleeping mat that lay where a more suspicious girl would’ve thought a sacrificial altar might go. One box remained unopened as he worked. I didn’t see them carry any of this stuff inside, so Raphael must have stashed it here ahead of time. The
room stank of mildew, but over that I noticed an aroma of peaches from the girl’s hair. I couldn’t tell if it was homemade or pre-Burn, but it was distractingly pleasant. I grabbed my attention by the scruff of its neck and pointed it back to the business at hand.

In JiTP, each player will take on the role of one of ten versions of a man called Joe. These versions all come from different times and possibilities. One might be Joe when he was 12 years old, dealing with a school bully. Another might be a 20-something college student with a lecherous boyfriend.

Joe is a pretty obsessive person, so it’s unsurprising that all of his variants are as well. Each of them is obsessed with a particular decision that he has to make, but has avoided making thus far.

All of the Joes in the game have come into contact with a person they know only as Keeton. From one innocuous conversation, they have each gained the ability to meet other possible Joes and influence them and their decisions. Unsurprisingly, after gaining this ability, most of the Joes choose to wander through time and space visiting and watching other versions of themselves rather than dealing with the decision they were avoiding in the first place.

The Joes embodied by the players are different, though. They’ve all become stuck, fixated on one, specific variant that they’ve found in their travels. They’ve dubbed him “Joe Prime.”

Joe Prime is just like every other Joe: he’s obsessive and he’s avoiding an important decision. Unlike the player-characters, however, Joe Prime has not met Keeton.

Joe Prime’s decision has become incredibly important to the stuck Joes. They each want his dilemma to be resolved in a different way, for different reasons. Maybe his problem resonates with their own, or maybe he’s come to represent something about themselves that they hate. Regardless of why, they’ve each decided to marshal their influence amongst the variants and push Joe’s situation towards their chosen conclusion.

But the Joes are risking more than they know. Interacting with variant versions of themselves can begin to take a toll on their sense of self. In the end, they may have to decide which is more important: the safety of themselves and their variants, or the success of their self-imposed mission.

And what of Keeton? What does he want? Why did he give this peculiar power to Joe?

Only time will tell.

Hi. My name is Joe. I’m pretty normal. Nothing interesting about me, really. I’m [twenty / twelve / thirty-five]. I live here in the city. I’ve been here most of my life. What else can I say?

I guess the most interesting thing about me is what happened a few weeks ago. I ran into this [guy in class / kid at the playground / man on the bus] and we somehow struck up a conversation. I’m not quite sure how it happened.

I’ll admit I was distracted. You see, I’ve been a little obsessed lately. I was kind of avoiding this decision I had to make about [my boyfriend / this bully at school / my future career] and I’ll admit Keeton showed up at just the right time to pull me out of my head.

Oh did I mention that? He said that was his name.

Anyway, we talked for a long time. About decisions, ironically enough. About how they can affect you and everyone around you. About how we seem to come to these points in our lives – these moments of decision that can change everything for us. Those moments we go back to late at night, and wonder how things might have been different.

Keeton asked me a lot of questions about things I might have done differently in my life.

I haven’t seen him since. I went home with my head spinning.

The next morning, I knew something had changed. I felt different, though I’ve never been able to put it into words. The first time I traveled, though, I understood what Keeton had done. It was the day I met myself. One of myselves. Whatever the word would be.

I met a Joe that [had never gone to college / lost his mom when he was little / had joined the army], and while it was weird, we had a nice conversation about the other Joes that might be out there.

Since then, I’ve met a lot of me, as I’ve learned how to wander through time and possibility. But there’s one Joe in particular I’ve become…well, I guess I’ve become obsessed with him. I … well, I guess we call him Joe Prime.

See I’m not the only one who’s obsessed with this Joe. There’s this [geeky twelve-year-old kid / old-sad-man-me / gay version of me] that I’ve seen around, and he seems interested in Joe Prime, too. I’ve gone up and down Prime’s time-line and seen him lurking everywhere in the background.

And I’ve seen how the other Joes are obsessed, too. Obsessed with the decision that Joe Prime is facing. You see, I want him to [stand up for himself / get away from the mess he's in / admit the truth to himself] but I don’t think the others want that.

So we’re kind of at a stalemate. Every time I try doing something directly to Joe Prime, one of the others shows up and messes everything thing up.

But I’ve got a plan.

I’ve got some other Joes on my side. [Blue-collar Joe / That sad other kid Joe / Army Joe] and I have been talking and I think I’ve got some pull with him. He’s agreed to go out for me and do a couple things along Joe Prime’s time-line. Try and convince him that our way is the best. Then, once he’s made the right decision, I think I can finally go back and [tell off my cheating ass of a so-called boyfriend / tell my parents about what's really been going on at school / leave my job and find my true calling].

And then everything’ll be great. Right?

See. I told you. I’m pretty normal.

Hundedämmerung is something different in the world of role-playing games. Most games allow players to portray beings of greater than human power wielding forces that ordinary people barely understand. This game allows you to play… a dog. Not just any dog, but a dog that has been lifted to human levels of intelligence, albeit the lower end of the scale, and endowed with minor telepathic powers that serve as
speech. In this game you will fight for the survival of your pack or the safety of “your” humans. And always, in the background, there looms the specter of a cat that is many cats – the undead, the undying, the (probably) evil Ozymandias. In Hundedämmerung you have no spells, you wield no magical or high-tech weapons and your psionic abilities aren’t much good for combat. What you have are your wits backed by natural canine ability. Use them right and evil will be your chew toy. Mess up and Ozymandias will use you as a scratching post. Welcome to the doghouse, sucker.

2499: We return home.
The colonies of Mars, born in hope, grew up in pain, despair and hard decisions. Some thought that the nations of Earth had learned their lessons and put aside the bombs forever. As it turned out, “forever” meant just long enough for them to build the Busway and send our forefathers down it – their smartest and brightest, their pride, their best hope – before everything that the Two Thousand knew collapsed at their heels into genocidal fire.

We survived, some of us. We dug into this lye-bitter dust and took from it air to breathe and water to drink, for those who hadn’t choked on CO2 and gone to graves scraped in the red slag while we toiled. We broke down the ships that could have taken us home, to build tools, to make the tools, to build the cities that could lift us again into the heavens.

In 2499, Director Keeton’s calculations have convinced the Martian nations that we’re ready to turn again to
whatever is left of the Earth, as Earth once looked outwards to this worn-down old globe where we stand today. With a stretch, we can reach the Busway and load onto the old shuttlers a few suitcases’ worth of cameras, radars and clever processors to go in our stead.

We may not get much. The probes might get killed in high orbit by vampiric satellite-hunters, flying junk that
we have no way to detect or track, sleeting radiation in the overloaded Van Allen belts, or our own carelessness with orbital mechanics. It’s been almost four hundred years, after all, since people tried this sort of thing.

The landers might not live a minute in the acid rain clouds, the war-dusts and the automated missile defences in the atmosphere, or the absolute unknowns that rove the bombed-out ground.

We’ve learned, on Mars, the value of sacrifice. We’ll send them anyway, for whatever we can get in the descent and the first 24 hours. After that, every hour is a gift. We’ll just have to play it by ear.

Gamba Robo! It’s a celebration of those glorious old robot shows that let the imagination run wild. Blazing swords and projectile weapons that looked like animals flashed across the screen to the amazement of many a yound child. Sure, they were written for companies that wanted to sell toys, but they were AWESOME! This is your chance to project yourself into their world as a daring hero or to create your own “show” as the narrator and throw all kinds of havoc at the poor unsuspecting Do-Gooders.

The mechanic is very simplistic and both play and character-creation are left mostly to the whim of the Narrator. This is an extremely rules-lite game designed to capture the feeling of those fantastic classic super-robot shows.

Chain fists, drill arms and tomahawks made of lightning were a regular feature of the 1970’s giant robot shows. The robots had names like Daitarn, Voltes V and Mazinger Z. They had personality and charisma of their own. Those towering heroes were shunned by the next generations in favor of more “realistic” mecha that emphasized the vehicular nature of the machines. Blazing swords were replaced by machine guns and guided missiles. We were no longer watching super heroes. We were watching wars. As fabulous and sophisticated as the new mecha shows are, some of us will always long for the super robots of days gone by. Nothing thrills like a huge, laser-edged disk hurling from a giant arm to cut right through the
shoulder of some immense monstrosity because our hero screamed, “SPINNN… SAUCER!”

This is a mostly-finished alpha version of what will hopefully be a more in-depth system/setting.

Based on 2d6+mods resolution, fixed damage.

The year is 1844. Following their successful defense against Mexican forces, the Republic of Texas faced a new foe. Quick to take advantage of their weakened position, French forces moved in by sea, seeking to regain a foothold in North America. Their forces were more disciplined, more determined, and better equipped than the forces of the Mexican Army, and soon France was calling Texas a French Territory. The United States of America, while wary of their new neighbors, had no cause for war, and left the Republic to their own devices. No Texan was comfortable living under French Rule, however, and the native tribes were divided, some siding with the French and others preferring the devil they knew to this new invader.

Texans began to fight back. Not all at once, but slowly and surely, the movement began. Gunmen, drifters, and bandits from nearby territories heard of the profit to be made fighting off the French Occupancy.

In this swirl of native warriors, French soldiery, and Texan roughnecks, any enterprising man (or woman) can make their mark. Will you?

“Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” – who watches these powerful unlicensed vigilantes and cleans up after their rampages?

You, of course, as an agent of the Headquarters for Enforcement & Registration of Observed Supernatural.

Of G-men and Supermen is a 24 hour game I wrote for the 1km11kt.net contest, on the topic “Power Squid”. It casts the players as government agents keeping tabs on the rising population of super-powered individuals in 1958 America.

As one of the contest judges, I can’t win, but as an activity done for fun – I think it came out well.

The game is based on a standard deck of 54 (including jokers) playing cards.

The G-man in the window sighed, adjusted his hat, and lit another cigarette. As the menthol feeling filled my lungs, I realized that it wasn’t a window, but a mirror. Damn. When did I get so old? It seems like just yesterday that I was a kid enjoying his comic books and now I’ve got gray temples and a conservative tie. When did this happen?

Oh yeah – when those comic books came to life.

A lot of people are willing to call them heroes, and that is not wholly wrong. “Comics” do pluck falling airliners out of the sky, and stop ice ray wielding whack jobs.

But we have taken to calling them “Squids”. Because they’ve got tentacles that reach into everything, making our life pretty complicated. After all, they’re vigilantes, who refuse to reveal their identities, and become involved in the law with no certification or training. Their authority issues from the fact they can break what seem to be basic laws of physics, much as the Reds rule by the barrel of a gun.

What does it mean to have faith in god when you see miracle workers every day?

If a so-called hero wanted to level an entire city, what could we do to stop them?

Well, our organization for one. We might not succeed, but out agents would try their hardest anyway. To do any less would be un-American.

Everyday we get our orders from Mr. Keeton. Everyday he seems ten years older. It can’t be easy to direct an agency like this when his twin brother is one of the people we watch extra closely.

I have to wonder who is the hero in this amazing tale. Is “Normal” Keeton ultimately the white knight charging down chaos and disorder? Or are these people to be taken at face value, and Keeton himself the villain?

It is also a game about bugpeople! In this fantasy roleplaying game, you take on the role of a human being in an odd fantasy society where everyone has traits derived from some insect or another. Characters have the power of hormonal and pheromonal supernatural abilities to help them achieve their goals & whatever their goals may be is up to the one writing the story!

This RPG was written through a thunderstorm, on the fleeting battery of a laptop during a blackout (in google documents that refused to save because the internet was out) and I like to think that makes it special. Enjoy!

Bug-People?
This game assumes that the character you’re playing is basically a human with some insect traits, rather than an actual insect or an “anthro” insect walking around on two legs.

This is done to simplify the game’s rules – while you can probably accept that a human with insect wings and clawed feet can stand on two legs, see like humans do, smell, taste and so forth, it is probably much more of a stretch to believe a bulky rhino beetle can do so, whimsical as that might be. It is also much easier for a Game Master to apply his common sense and logic in a game of humans with bug traits, than it is in a game of talking bugs. Rather than complicating its rules, the game assumes you’re playing bug-people. So you’re not really playing a butterfly – you’re playing a human being with butterfly wings and antennae.

These Bug-People (referred to from here on out as just Insects) wear clothes, have two eyes, stand on two legs, and have mouths, talk, and act like humans would, even living in a fantasy style society. How you visualize your character, however, is up to you, and the society your insects live in is up to your Game Master’s story. There is a section below that talks about such concerns, primarily to Game Masters.

Insect Society has many types of Insects and 4 Castes: Warrior, Servitor, Scout, Noble. All insects can be a member of any Caste, with some prerequisites. All Insects have two special powers, pheromones and hormones. These act as the magic of the game. Hormones are focused on helping or healing a creature, and Pheromones harm or influence a creature. Some creatures learn more of these powers, or are focused more on them, depending on their Caste.

Badass Presidents is a game of playing American Presidents who are sufficiently badass. The world has been destroyed, overrun by mutants, evil deities, and horrors from beyond the stars. As an American President, what can you do but dust off your knuckleduster and get ready to kick some ass.

Badass Presidents is a role-playing game, and additionally, one designed in 24 hours as a part of a contest. Therefore, the reader is cautioned in that when reading the content that you are about to behold, keep in mind that you got what you paid for. If you paid money for this document, you should find who sold it to you, and beat the crap out of them for making an idiot out of you.

Bring reality into your game, and perhaps game into your reality.

Players: 3 or more
System: Rough Consensus
Need: Pencils, drinking glass, and a large piece of white paper

Written as part of The 1KM1KT / Free RPG Blog 24 Hour RPG Competition.

The document is supposed to be printed as an A5 booklet, therefor the blank pages.

Welcome, oh Seeker of the Dead
This game is about relationships – dysfunctional relationships. We will each bring one problematic relationship from our lives into the game, and in game it will be transformed into a fictional relationship to a spirit.

We will perhaps be able to resolve the issues of the relationships by contacting the spirits at a séance. Hopefully reliving the past and speaking to the dead will help us resolve our issues with the once living. Time will tell.

Before we begin let me first summarize the game we’re about to play. Then I’ll go into more detail about how you do specific parts of the game, and finally we’ll have time for an example and some
advice.

For a thousand generations, the hundred tribes of the Hamster Republic lived in peace among themselves and with their neighbours. The Syrians lived alone as was their way, and the Dwarfs lived in small villages as was theirs, and popularly-elected Rulers supervised the happiness of all the tribes. All were content with their lives, living off the land.

Then came the Mekaton. They were autonomous machines from elsewhere, and the hamsters had never seen anything like them. They built massive installations and labyrinthine cities, and mined the earth for minerals to build more like them.

At first, the hamsters tried living peacefully alongside the Mekaton. There was plenty of room for everyone. Ruler Titus even adopted some Mekaton customs. But then, the land started to become poisoned and the waters polluted. The Mekaton were deaf to the hamsters’ complaints. The hamsters grew restless, but wherever their unrest boiled over to violence,
the force guns of the Mekaton made short work of their opponents.

And you don’t like the way the Directors look.

It’s time to find the Producer and get some answers.

It’s the ‘50s. Oddly, you can’t quite remember the year. You’re a pretty ordinary person, maybe just a tad better than the average joe, with a pretty exciting life. You’re a jungle explorer, a gangbuster, a private detective, a heroic scientist.

There’s just one problem: you swear you’ve seen this all in a movie.

You can’t quite put your finger on it, but reality just doesn’t seem to add up anymore. Maybe it’s the gaps in your memory; you don’t feel like you have a real past. Maybe it’s the way you suddenly “remember” someone you feel you’ve just
met. Maybe it’s the occasional moments of lost time. Or maybe it’s the way you can sometimes predict what’s about to happen, because it seems to be part of the “plot formula”.

There’s also more eerie evidence. The feeling you’re being watched. The way everything seems to be connected. The way the universe seems to conspire against you any time you try to “break the plot”. And those strangers in the shadows…

Whatever it is, you’re going to get to the bottom of it. And you know Keeton hasthe answers…

The Premise
Haven takes place in the star system of Tau, containing many fantastic places and inhabited by several sentient species, and surrounded by an impenetrable barrier field. Several lifetimes worth of adventure await in Tau, but the ultimate mystery is this: who cut out the system from the rest of the galaxy – and why?

This is a game about resource management, strategy, outwitting the GM, and telling a cool story to justify all the stuff you want to do with game mechanics.

OR

This is a game about adventurous types out looking to recover lost artifacts, mighty weapons of power, and ancient relics. The default setting of the game is a soft sci-fi post-apocalyptic world where high-tech items may still exist in ruined cities, forgotten bomb shelters, hidden compounds, or remote and inhospitable wilderness regions. You can also send people looking for treasure in the pulp age, or on distant worlds, or in a fantasy realm if you like. Most of the setting stuff is just window dressing that will affect how things are described but not how the game mechanics work.

The game is written for a group of 3-6 people, one to GM. Someday I will add rules for one-on one play. You will need pencils, paper, ten-sided dice (at least 3, maybe 3 per player), and some kind of chips or beads or markers in four distinct colors. (You could use several decks of playing cards, treating each suit as a color.)

Beltaine is a game about the Faeries and creatures of Celtic myth living in the modern world. It’s being put together quickly as a part of the 24 hour RPG project, and will hopefully serve as a springboard for a cyberpunk-and-Fae game I hope to write later.

The faerie courts are dangerous places, socially and physically, and it is easy to fall from favor. The safest thing to do when one does so is to go into exile on Earth. Some, like the Fomorians, live in permanent exile on Earth, either in hiding or disguised as humans. Fae on Earth often interbreed with humans, and their half-faerie children typically remain behind.

The edge of the century draws near, as does the life of the great Queen Victoria. In America, the Native tribes have been decimated, and the frontier declared closed. England is beginning to lose her Empire, though for the moment it is safe. In the cities, women shout for the right to vote, workers strike for a living wage, and anarchists gather in secret with Das Capital in one hand and a bomb in another.

In Europe, ethnic unrest and a complex web of alliances will soon burn the continent in a war many men think will be good. They say that Europe has gone soft and weak and needs a war to make it strong again.

And underneath the calm, stoic Victorian facade, madness coils and twists, waiting to erupt. Secret societies meet, calling on spirits of the dead and ancient gods. Curses lay upon families, waiting to drag them down into madness, or worse.

Central Resolution Mechanic inspired by “dukereg” on the “Opportunity Pool” thread at http://forum.rpg.net/archive/index.php/t-384462.html

Immortalis’ is a game set in the current day, but it is a world very different from our own. Colonies and space stations dot the Solar System and the first steps to other stars are about to be taken. You play an Immortal, either part of the public face of the Council of Immortals or hidden amongst the masses. Either way, you work to guide humanity and stop the insidious influence of the Dark Summoners. Dark Summoners are people who can summon entities from the Rift and use them to control mortals like puppets.

Immortals have been around since the dawn of man. In ancient times they were the heroes of myth. However, during Roman times a Council was formed and Immortals decided to let normal mortals define the shape of the world to come. Immortals retreated from sight.

The plan worked well for 2000 years. In secret Immortals worked to limit the damage done by the Dark Summoners. However, the numbers of Dark Summoners grew until the conflict engulfed the world in war in the late 19th century. Secrecy was no longer possible and after the victory of the Immortals and their mortal allies, the Council of Immortals decided to take on a guiding role in the world. It was a Golden Time of art and science and it took humanity into space.

The game uses a fairly simple set of rules and you’ll need up to 5d6 for each player and the GM.

INTRODUCTION
In case you had already guessed ‘Immortalis’ is the latin word for immortal and that is what the player characters are.

First of all you should probably be an experienced GM or player. I will not be explaining about what roleplaying is, define many common roleplaying terms or include a lot of the other things you find written at the start of many rpgs. Consequently, you should probably already know that stuff and have done it all before.

These rules may be copied or printed freely, so long as I’m given credit. However, they may not be sold or used for profit by anyone but me.

WHAT DO YOU NEED?
You’ll need up to 5d6 for the GM and each player. I’ve also included a character sheet at the end.

THE SETTING
This game is set in an alternate version of the current day. There are colonies on several moons and planets in the Solar System and fusion-powered ships ply the space lanes between. Some believe that the first step between the stars has been taken. We first ventured into space in the 1905, ten years after the Great War.

DIP-Styx

An introductory RPG for the 24 Hour RPG Project
Written by Timothy Dedeaux
Begun Sunday night, April 20, 2008 around 7:00 pm
Ended Monday, April 21, 2008 around ??
Premise/idea: one non-roleplayer who’d tried roleplaying and hadn’t fallen in love with it told me the hardest part was character creation. Cross-referencing this in my mind with what I’d read years ago on the old Rec.Games.frp.Advocacy group about Design at Start vs. Develop in Play styles, I decided to write an RPG to emphasize the DIP side of things, and perhaps help new roleplayers get over the “character creation” hurdle. Develop in Play is abbreviated “DIP,” and thus the “DIP” part of the name. The “Styx” part comes from the setting. For the record, this is designed for an at least somewhat experienced GM to use to introduce new players, not to be easy-access for a group of total newbies.

For thousands of years, Charon guarded the entrance to the underworld, protecting us from the things that go bump in the night. But now, he’s gone missing, and creatures are slowly breaking free, and it falls to ordinary people to stop them. Ghosts, vampires, werewolves, and strange spirits must be put to rest, and only you can do it: are you up to the task?.
The game begins with a group of relatively ordinary people (the player characters, perhaps with a few NPCs around for flavoring) finding themselves in a strange situation. They have to figure out what’s going on and how to stop the creature. Ultimately, the game is a game of investigative horror, though the horror can be run anywhere from G-rated, funny cartoon monsters to Unrated disturbing things. The characters may find themselves chasing ghosts through old, haunted mansions, seeking lost children in the dream world, chasing a vampire through the slums where he preys on prostitutes, Jack the Ripper style, or hunting (and being hunted by) a werewolf on a country estate.